‘Honest, that dress looked great on you,’ Laurel said.
She sensed that Kim needed a confidence boost with all this fat talk. She really hoped that something would happen with Kim and Tom at this party, because it would be a huge blow if it didn’t.
‘I wish I had a dress like that,’ Laurel said with a sigh.
‘There’s still time to head into town and get something,’ Kim replied without turning around as she pulled on her jeans. ‘We could go tomorrow.’
Laurel snorted. ‘I wish.’
It was alright for Kim. Her parents gave her almost three times the amount of pocket money that Laurel got, and she didn’t even have to do any chores to earn it. She could afford to get beautiful denim dresses from The Gap without emptying her piggy bank, and still have enough for more.
Kim’s parents had heaps of money, thanks to her dad’s insurance company. They went to Benidorm every summer and lived in a huge house with more than enough space for everyone. Kim’s room was everything Laurel’s wasn’t. It was big, stylish and decked out with the latest of everything; a vinyl player, state-of-the-art stereo and a portable colour television. She even had cable. But somehow, despite being in comfortable surroundings, Kim couldn’t find a way to be comfortable in her own skin. She always needed reassurance and a cushion to land on if she fell.
Laurel, on the other hand, didn’t care very much for cushions. She was much more interested in what happened on the way down than the landing. She was determined to do more, to be more. She only had one stamp in her passport after a holiday to France by ferry, and lived in a standard semi-detached in a completely normal cul-de-sac instead of a sprawling five-bedroomed detached mansion like the one Kim called home. Sometimes, it seemed to her that Kim had no idea how lucky she was to have the things she did, but the differences in their upbringing and family circumstances had never been an issue between them. Kim was like a sister to Laurel, so even though she felt pangs of jealousy about not being able to spend an obscene amount of money on a single item of clothing, it wasn’t something she held against her. Especially not when it looked as good as her dress did.
‘So what will you wear then?’ Kim asked. ‘You’re still coming, aren’t you?’
Laurel nodded. ‘Probably just jeans and a vest. Nothing fancy.’
‘But the shoes will make it. Yours always do.’
They were her mum’s shoes, if they were being technical. Alice was all about power dressing with shoulder pads and big, Elnett-sprayed hair like the women on Dynasty and she had a thing for stiletto heels. She had pairs in every colour from black to white to red and electric blue. All were in perfect condition and all were perfectly ripe for borrowing.
‘Steve Mills will be there, too,’ Kim said with a grin on her face.
Laurel thought back to that party a few weeks ago when she’d pushed her nerves to one side and spent almost half an hour snogging Steve, the boy at college she’d had a crush on for ages.
She waved her hand in the air. ‘Been there, done that. Don’t want to do it again, either.’
‘Since when?’ Kim frowned and picked up the box of Rothmans on her desk, offering one to Laurel. ‘You’ve been going on about him for ages.’
Laurel got up from the bed and took the cigarette, joining her at the window. She’d never be able to smoke in her room. Her mum would smell it straight away and then there’d be hell to pay. Kim had so much freedom: no curfew, a good amount of pocket money, wine at dinner and being able to smoke at home. Laurel wished she had parents like hers.
She shrugged. ‘It wasn’t that good.’
‘You said it was the best kiss you’d ever had.’
Laurel lit her cigarette and leaned out of the window. ‘Yeah, but now I think it was probably just the booze. I mean, if it had been that good, I’d want more.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘Not with him.’ She leaned out the window and blew out a plume of smoke.
Outside, the sun had already sunk behind the fields that stretched beyond Kim’s house and the sky was lined with blueberry-coloured streaks of cloud.
‘With who, then?’
Laurel shrugged and took another drag on her cigarette.
‘Ohhh. The new neighbour?’ Kim asked, looking at her with a smile. ‘The Tom Cruise lookalike.’
‘I’m telling you, he’s his better looking twin.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Kim snorted.
‘He is!’
‘He’s also twenty-five.’
‘I know,’ Laurel sighed, flicking her cigarette out into the darkness. The amber tip glowed as the cigarette arced away from them before landing a few metres away on the ground. ‘So it doesn’t really matter, does it?’
‘Why? Age doesn’t mean anything.’ Kim stubbed her cigarette out onto the windowsill before flinging the butt away. ‘Why don’t you invite him to Tom’s on Friday?’
Laurel laughed. ‘Get real. That’d be like someone inviting us to a five-year-old’s birthday party.’ She ducked backwards under the window frame and stretched, feeling the buzz from the nicotine in her head. ‘I should just stick to guys my own age. And Steve wasn’t that bad. Not really.’
Not bad, no. But in comparison to the way her heartbeat had skipped just by speaking with Nico? It was in a different league altogether. Laurel was confident, but not that confident. She couldn’t just invite a complete stranger who also happened to be the object of a strong crush along to a teenage party. What would they talk about? He was older than her, and from London. He was probably much more sophisticated than she could even begin to imagine. At least she had things in common with Steve. It was much better to stick to guys her own age.
*
Three days later, she threw her bag onto her bed. The weight of the books inside made it bounce, and it fell onto the floor with a heavy thud. She slammed her bedroom door, shutting out her mum’s incessant nagging about university. It wasn’t as if she were expecting an answer anyway, she never did.
It had been a foul day. She’d been late to college and then found out that Steve Mills had asked someone out and would be bringing her to the party, ruling out any chance of him and Laurel picking up from where they’d left off last time. She’d missed the bus home and, instead of waiting an hour for the next one, she’d walked back, sweltering in the heat with a stupidly heavy rucksack on her back. Then, just to add to it all, as soon as she’d walked in the door, her mum had started going on and on about university and all the things she still had to do and how important it was not to get complacent. Laurel had just about managed to block out her mum’s monologue, busying herself with making a jam sandwich, but then her dad had come home from work and joined in the chorus. Laurel had snapped at them both to just leave her the hell alone, and escaped upstairs. What was it with her parents? Why didn’t they know when to stop and give it a rest?
She crossed the worn path on her carpeted floor to the window and flung it open, taking a breath of the air coming into the stifling room. She could handle her parents. It was the news about Steve that had got to her. After speaking with Kim the other night, she’d convinced herself that she was being silly, writing him off just like that. Especially because she hadn’t seen Nico since the morning after he’d moved in. Not a glimpse, and she’d kept a watch from her bedroom window like some elderly busybody in the Neighbourhood Watch with nothing better to do. She’d dawdled every morning since just in case they happened to cross paths again, which was how she’d ended up being over an hour late today. But nothing. He’d simply disappeared, vanished into thin air, as if he’d never even been there at all. If it weren’t for the fact that George and her mum had seen him too, she would have convinced herself that he’d never even existed and was just a figment of her sad imagination. Laurel looked out of the window again, just in case he miraculously reappeared. He didn’t. She sighed and pressed play on her cassette player, hoping Bananarama’s latest single would help her to get in the mood for tonight’s party.
>
She pulled out a folder from her bookshelf and sat on her bed. Her parents might be dead set against her having a career as a photographer, but they couldn’t squash the dream in her head. She flicked through the pages of her makeshift portfolio, looking at the black and white photos on the pages. Did she have what it took? Sometimes, she didn’t know. Compared to her idol, Gerda Taro, she was an extreme amateur at best. She’d shown her portfolio to the photography lecturer at college once, just to see what he thought, and he’d said she had a great way of capturing raw emotion. Surely he didn’t say that to everyone?
What hurt the most was that her dad, Robert, was the whole reason she’d got into photography in the first place. She’d been fascinated with his camera as a kid and he’d taught her everything from understanding the mechanics of a camera to how to read the light. He’d even converted the cellar into a darkroom and showed her how to develop the photographs. Until he’d got promoted to manager and decided to devote his life to his job instead, they’d spent loads of time together, going out on long walks to take photos and then develop them. Laurel stared at a portrait of him, smiling into the camera. Sometimes, it felt as if her parents had been swapped with clones, identical in looks but completely different in personality, like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There was no other way to explain the way they’d gone from being fun parents to ones who just moaned all the time.
Someone knocked on her door, but she ignored it. She didn’t want to talk more about university. Instead, she turned the page of her portfolio and looked at a photograph of George. It was one of her favourites. She’d taken it in secret, through a crack in his bedroom door as he’d got ready for a night out. She’d timed the shot perfectly as he’d sat in front of his mirror and slicked gel onto his hair because he’d had a small smile on his face, as if he were thinking about the night ahead. If she looked closely, she could just about make out her half-hidden self in the reflection.
Someone knocked on her door again and she flipped the portfolio shut.
‘What?’ she shouted.
‘It’s me.’
Laurel carefully slipped the folder under her bed and got up from the bed to open the door. George was standing on the other side, holding a small bag in his hands. She’d forgotten that she’d asked him to do her hair for the party.
‘What trouble have you been causing now?’ he asked with a smirk and walked past her into the room.
‘Ugh, don’t.’
Downstairs, Shirley Bassey was playing on the stereo full blast, accompanied by the sound of her mum singing. Alice had a great voice, all gritty and powerful. Laurel had loved to listen to her sing when she was younger but, right now, it was jarring. She shut the door as George emptied his bag onto the bed, sending brushes, combs, sprays, gels and a curling iron tumbling across her duvet.
Laurel sat at the chair by her desk and told him about the day’s events as he got to work on her hair, just as if they were in a real salon. She didn’t know how he did it, listening to people talk all day long about their problems, jobs and relationships, especially because he usually never shut up at home. But today, George kept quiet as she talked, parting her hair into sections and twisting strands of it around the curling iron, injecting an ‘mm-hmm’ here and there. Maybe he should take up psychotherapy as well, because by the time he’d finished, she felt much better. The sharp smell of Elnett surrounded her as George doused her hair.
He tweaked a strand of her peroxide locks. ‘There. Kim Wilde, eat your heart out.’
Laurel stared at her reflection. How did he do it? How had he turned her limp bob into this? She didn’t like curls, and had been worried she’d end up looking like Shirley Temple, but George had used the curling irons carefully to create the merest hint of waves. She looked like just woken up with it like that and then ruffled her hands through it for good measure. He was a genius.
‘Thanks, George. You’re the best.’ She grinned at him through the mirror.
‘Do you want me to do your make-up, too?’
Her grin grew wider and she nodded. She wasn’t bad with make-up, but George had taken a course and was miles better. He twirled his finger, motioning for her to turn the chair around to face him and she did as she was told. He grabbed the wooden stool from the corner of her room and sat in front of her.
‘You know, you shouldn’t let Mum and Dad get to you so much,’ he said, brushing her face with powder foundation.
Laurel’s nose twitched as the soft bristles tickled her face. She loved the smell of it. Her parents went to bingo at the social club every Friday night and when she was younger, she used to sit with her mum, watching with awe as her face was transformed with a palette of colours. She’d always loved the light, barely-there scent of powder. Alice was probably sitting in front of the mirror in her bedroom, covering her face in it while their dad dressed, smothering himself with Brut and sending the sharp fragrance of it around the entire upper floor of the house.
‘It’s easy for you to say,’ Laurel replied. ‘You’ve always been able to do what you want. They’d never bat an eyelid if you’d have said you wanted to be a photographer, or an artist, or-’
‘Gay?’ He said, finishing her sentence. ‘At least you can fall in love with whoever you want without worrying about what might happen. You can openly have a boyfriend and have sex with whoever you want without being arrested for it.’
Laurel bit on her lip, feeling contrite. He was right, and it angered her. He was her older brother but he couldn’t legally have sex for another two years. Being gay had been decriminalised twenty years ago, before he’d even been born, but yet he still faced so much discrimination.
She sighed at the injustice of it all and closed her eyes as he got to work on her eyebrows. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘There’s no supposing about it. One way to look at it all is, once you’re in uni, you’re out of here. You don’t have to stay here, you could find a room to rent closer to campus.’
‘Or you could just open up your own salon and I could come live with you.’
‘And have my little sister cramp my style?’
Laurel opened her eyes to see him looking back at her with that damned raised eyebrow of his.
‘Trust me,’ he continued, ‘Uni will be much better in the long run. It’s only a few years and then you can do whatever the hell you want. Do a photography course. Go wherever you want, travel the world. Close your eyes.’
Laurel did as she was told and tried to keep them shut as he applied eye shadow.
‘You could always look at a degree as an insurance policy, just in case,’ he continued. ‘You never know if you’ll need it and besides, it could be fun.’
She’d never thought of it like that before, but maybe he was right. Maybe it was possible to have the best of both worlds - get her parents off her back, and then have the career of her dreams.
‘And as for our Greek Adonis,’ George continued, ‘he’s home now, so you can stop pining and get on with your life.’
‘What?’ Laurel’s eyes snapped open and George tutted.
‘For God’s sake, do you want to look like something from The Rocky Horror Picture Show or what?’
‘No.’
‘Then close your eyes and don’t move, or you’ll have to finish this yourself.’ He went back to slathering her eyelids. ‘He got back while I was doing your hair.’
For the first time in days, she hadn’t been glued to her window. Trust that to be the moment for him to reappear. Laurel’s stomach flipped. Nico was back. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t make much difference, seeing as he was twenty-five and probably had a model-like girlfriend, while she was a seventeen-year-old girl who still had dolls from her eleventh birthday in her room, but still. A girl could dream. Which she did, as George finished her make-up.
He held her chin between his forefinger and thumb as she held her mouth open for him to streak lipstick across her lips.
‘Here,’ he said, putt
ing a piece of tissue between her lips for her to blot the colour onto. ‘All done.’
George handed her the mirror and, she swore she could have kissed him. Her eyelids were covered with a blend of deep purple and pink tones, her eyebrows perfectly coloured in and her eyes framed with dark liner. He’d somehow managed to give her cheekbones and she pouted her red lips, shaking her head.
‘Why does Mum always do her make-up herself instead of letting you do it? This looks fantastic.’
George shrugged as he stood up. ‘You know Mum. She likes to do things her own way.’
Laurel jumped up from the chair and hugged him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Any time, Sunshine.’
‘Do you want to come tonight?’
George shook his head. ‘I’ve got a date.’
‘With who?’
‘Nobody you know,’ he replied, putting his things back into his bag. ‘I’ve decided to let you have the hunk over the road.’
‘Oh, thanks, how very generous of you,’ Laurel said, rolling her eyes in mock gratitude.
‘Just do me a favour and wear something to do that face and hair justice, okay?’
She nodded and, as soon as he was gone, she jumped over to the window. A blue convertible Ford Escort was parked outside the Papoulis’ house. It hadn’t been there when they’d moved in, and it looked brand new. Nico must have a pretty good job if he could afford such a nice car. Laurel turned away from the window. It was yet another thing they’d have no common ground over. She didn’t earn any money at all, unless you counted washing dishes and pushing the vacuum cleaner around the house a job.
What Goes Down: An emotional must-read of love, loss and second chances Page 8